The Secret Agent <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/windows/21/000000/star-half.png"/>

The Secret Agent

Brazilian writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho delivers one of the films of the year with this political thriller that hoovered up awards at Cannes. It stars Wagner Moura as Armando, an ex-academic who lands in Recife during Carnival time in 1977. Once there, he's welcomed into a kind of apartment block commune, filled with other 'refugees' from some tyranny or other. The opening of the film teases the situation, slowly unpicking the threads as we cruise through the northern Brazilian setting. It's extremely confident of keeping details held back, no need to rush the exposition.

We're introduced to quite a few characters, on both sides of humanity - helpful matriarchs, corrupt cops, selfless in-laws, scuzzy hitmen, crusading journos, and one Jewish German Holocaust survivor. Yep, there's a lot going on here. Around the end of the first act, we flash-forward to the present to find a couple of researchers going through old cassette tapes of interviews between Armando and Elza (Maria Fernando Cândido), an advocate trying to obtain exit papers for Armando and his son. From here on, the narrative jumps forward occasionally to one of the researchers, Flavia (Laura Lufési), as she tries to uncover what happened all those years ago.

The street scenes of 1970s Recife are amazing, particularly one shot of the river from a window in a cinema. It's not breathtaking scenery as such, but it's utterly evocative. A fair bit of the action takes place in an awesome old projection room at said cinema, apparently seen in Mendonça's previous documentary about Recife's cinema-going past, Pictures of Ghosts. The art department has excelled itself, cinematographer Evgenia Alexandrova deserves praise, and the music is great too, with some groovy old Brazilian tracks mixed in with Donna Summer and Chicago.

In the third act, there's a very Coen-esque, elliptical moment that is so matter-of-fact, it knocks you back a bit. And there is one sequence that completely elevates The Secret Agent from very good to excellent. I won't go into it, just to say, in retrospect, it seems like a lot of the measured, even-paced legwork was building up to that confrontation. Fantastic stuff.

The performances are from the top drawer. Wagner Moura, with his downcast expression and gentle manner, excels in the role of Armando. Alice Carvahlo, as his wife Fátima, has one electric moment, and Gregorio Graziosi as businessman Ghirotti is appropriately slimy, as is Robério Diógenes as dodgy police chief, Euclides. There's also a spot of grand larceny from the old caretaker Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), she holds court and steals every scene she's in.

The film is popping with metaphors. Armando's son Fernando is itching to see the film Jaws, on release after the discovery of a severed leg inside a shark off the coast. We find out later than when he finally saw it, he stopped having nightmares. Some of the subtext, though, flew past yours truly. On occasion, the camera zooms into specific portraits hanging on walls of buildings (regime figures, maybe?). I'm lost on the significance of a red-masked carnival character that appears sometimes, there's a two-faced cat and a fucking weird sidebar of a newspaper story about the 'Hairy Leg'. I guess Brazilians of the time will have more background knowledge but these few head scratchers didn't subtract anything from the enjoyment of the film.

The Secret Agent is part of the Lotterywest Perth Festival film season at UWA Somerville. It's running from Jan 5th to 11th. Do yourself a favour and go see it.

See also:

This was the final film for Udo Kier (he died in Nov 2025), so it seems only right to suggest one of the many film he appeared in. I'll go for E. Elias Merhige's odd Shadow of the Vampire (2000), which I've likely recommended before. For a thematic link, let's choose the recent I'm Still Here (2024), directed by Walter Salles.

Comments

Wake Up Dead Man

Wake Up Dead Man (without a comma to be seen) is the third Benoit Blanc mystery, written and directed by Rian Johnson. Daniel Craig stars again as the Foghorn Leghorn-twanging detective but he's a touch overshadowed here by the 'supporting' cast, namely Josh O'Connor as young priest, Jud (Judas anyone?) Duplenticy, Josh Brolin as Monsignor Wicks and Glenn Close as church dogsbody Martha. Though it seems O'Connor is the new big thing, especially in indie films, I find him about as engaging as the weekly supermarket trip. In saying that, he's a pretty good foil for the rest of the characters, who have charisma by the bucketload. Blanc only appears around the start of act two, after all the set-up has been dealt with, in a very similar fashion to the previous films, Knives Out and Glass Onion . We gather that somebody has been killed on Good Friday, and the format for this exposition is a letter that Blanc asks Jud to write to him. This works well enough, (Keigo ...

It Was Just an Accident

The latest from Iranian director Jafar Panahi is a simple, yet brilliant story of a chance encounter with a bastard from the past that oscillates between revenge and forgiveness. We start on an almost uncomfortably close mid-shot of a man and a woman driving at night. They run over a stray dog and the mother explains to her daughter that it was just an accident, setting the stage for other events that may or may not have been accidental. Panahi fills the frame with his protagonists, faces, mostly in states of distress, to the extent that when the screen opens up to show a man digging a makeshift grave in a long shot with vast, lumpy hills in the distance, it's a massive relief of tension. This man is Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), who thinks he has stumbled upon Eghbal, (A.K.A. Peg Leg or the Gimp) (Ebrahim Azizi), an Iranian intelligence agent who tortured him years ago. Doubt forces Vahid to enlist other victims to help identify Peg Leg, before any retribution is taken. The film is rid...

Predator: Badlands

So without me really noticing, this franchise has reached NINE films (if you include the two Alien vs Predator crossovers). The last three have been directed (or co-directed) by Dan Trachtenberg, who's also helmed an episode each of the TV shows Black Mirror and The Boys . I've got to say, carry on lad, because this is probably the best Predator film I've seen (let me revisit the Arnie one before I remove that 'probably'). This film starts as a revenge quest that soon morphs into a discourse on dysfunctional families and finding your groove in life. All wrapped up in a gnarly, bloody sci-fi romp. I say blood, in actual fact, none of it is human blood, all characters being either alien or synthetic humanoid. That in itself is one of the film's credits - none of the protagonists are human, and the nominal lead is usually a villain. Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is from the Yautja race, the original 'ugly mother-fucker' Predator. The preamble n...

The Quiet Girl

This is a great film, especially in the way that it manages to create something interesting out of a reasonably mundane synopsis. A young girl is sent away to a relative's house for the summer where she is treated better than at home. Sounds like it could have a bit of Rohmer-style youthful awakenings? Or maybe some gritty Loach-ian societal comment? Even perhaps a revenge tinged 'fear the youth' theme? Well, it's none of the above, and more power to its style. The Quiet Girl herself (Cáit) is a newcomer, Catherine Clinch, and she was apparently found via an Irish language school call out. She's incredible - meek, direct, no airs nor graces whatsoever, with a clear-eyed awkwardness. She's almost like a little female Bowie in The Quiet Girl Who Fell to Earth (no, not a film but I thought I'd italicise anyway). There are orbiting performances that complement her perfectly. Carrie Crowley and Andrew Bennet play Eibhlín and Seán Cinnsealach, the couple who tak...

Upon Open Sky

Upon Open Sky sees a trio of teenagers head north from Mexico City on a mission to find the trucker who caused the accident that killed the father of the two lads. Promising enough premise, unfortunately, this is a slight film, aiming for profundity. It opens with the build up to the accident, somewhere in the dusty Mexican bush, then the crash itself acts as a timeslip point to two years later. Fernando (Máximo Hollander) scours a car scrapyard, looking for something. His younger brother, Salvador (Theo Goldin), who was in the car when their father died, understandably mopes around the house, only rising to perv on their new step-sister, Paula (Federica Garcia) as she changes for bed. When mum and new step-dad announce they're off to Spain for a holiday, Fernando makes plans of his own to find (and maybe kill) the trucker. So off they go to a town on the US border in search of him. Now, this film could have been much better, and I'm kind of at pains to work out why I didn...

Hesitation Wound

This film was shown at the Revelation Film Festival programme launch for 2024. It's a Turkish legal drama that leaves a lot unsaid, unexplained, with plenty of scope for interpretation. Tülin Özen plays Canan, a lawyer tasked with defending a guy on a murder charge, Musa (Ogulcan Arman Uslu). At the same time, she is dealing with the slow demise of her old mother, hospitalised in a coma. The minutiae of life in this small Turkish town is fascinating. There's one simple, prosaic scene where Canan stops by a chemist to buy a razor so Musa can shave for the hearing. The shopkeeper asks what kind, she tells him she doesn't know, he selects for her, then explains that she can't use her debit card for that amount, so she buys some pretzel sticks. Completely normal, yet for some reason, I've remembered this scene weeks later. Maybe it's the unusualness of seeing a Turkish store on screen, but I think the on-point pacing of the film has a lot to do with it. Another odd...

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

A few years ago, we hit the S.S.P. (Superhero Saturation Point). And the best way for studios to arrest, or even maybe reverse, the law of diminishing returns is to JUST GIVE IT A FUCKING REST. There's enough residual goodwill in the fan base to guarantee profits....for now. But, as Malcolm Gladwell said, there must be a tipping point. So into this cinematic avalanche slips The Fantastic Four: First Steps , the first film of Phase Six and the thirty seventh overall! It's quite dull for the first 30 minutes, setting up the characters, ensuring the audience understands we're on a slightly different Earth (828), and a different time as well. It only gets going when the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) appears and promises everyone death by devouring. She's not going to eat them, she works for a massive space turd called Galactus, played by Finchy himself, Ralph Ineson. He'll do the devouring. Here's the thing - this film is a perfectly serviceable entry, not brilliant,...

Nouvelle Vague

This opening screening of the Perth Festival's Lotterywest Film season is a cinephile's delight. It documents the production of Jean-Luc Godard's seminal feature debut, À Bout de Souffle (or Breathless ). The title refers to the New Wave of French film from the beginning of the 1960s, which railed against the tired, old ways of film-making. Nouvelle Vague actually looks like it was shot on film, it's riddled with scratch marks, there's are many big black dots indicating the end of the reel, and of course, it's in black and white. The director, Richard Linklater, is obviously a huge fan of Breathless . This is a lovingly made, breezy film, that isn't terribly hard-hitting or deep, but is a fine background to one of the classics. The casting is excellent, specifically the Jeans; Godard, Seberg and Belmondo, played by Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch and Aubry Dullin respectively. They all look the part and turn in performances just the right side of parody....

One Battle After Another

Before this film, Paul Thomas Anderson had at least one certifiable classic on his CV in There Will Be Blood . Now, make that two. In saying this, most of his films range from good to brilliant. This is his second adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel (after the uneven but interesting Inherent Vice ) and it looks at the lives of modern American revolutionaries, notably members of French 75. The group are apparently named after a WWI weapon, and then a cocktail, both of which have something of a kick. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob, The Rocket Man, who makes the ordnance for the group and is in a relationship with fellow revolutionary, Perfidia (Teyana Taylor). A combination of a run-in with Sean Penn's Colonel Steven Lockjaw, and a rash killing of a security guard triggers more interest in the group, and so a roundup begins. Perfidia is caught, then forced to name names before doing a runner. But not before she has a daughter with Bob, whom he is left to raise on the run. After this f...

Top twenty WWII films

The Guardian recently ran an article on the ten best World War II films, as voted by respondents to a Deltapoll for The War Movie Theatre podcast (see their list and link at the end of this piece). As this year is 80 years since the end of hostilities, I thought it might be interesting to run down my top twenty World War II films. Here we go: 20. Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg - 1987) This China-set drama of expats during the war in the Pacific theatre was Christian Bale's first big role at the age of 13. He's pretty bloody good too, as are most of the cast, including John Malkovich and Nigel Havers. Spielberg saw this J.G. Ballard story as a chance to make a comparatively 'darker' film about the loss of innocence and it turned out to be one of his very best. 19. The English Patient (Anthony Minghella - 1996) All the press for this film was the love story angle between dreamy Ralph Fiennes (pre-Voldemort, of course) and elegantly icy Kristin Sc...

Film Shapes

Search This Blog